


Writing on the Wall

by calrissian18



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Disordered Thought Process, Jealousy, M/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-29
Updated: 2012-11-29
Packaged: 2017-11-19 20:56:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/577557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calrissian18/pseuds/calrissian18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There was a moment, before his sanity had packed its bags—bed still warm and cigarette still burning in the cheap ashtray on the nightstand—that he thought this might be too much."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Writing on the Wall

**Author's Note:**

> My little odyssey into madness. Who knew crazy could be so much fun?

 

There was a moment, before his sanity had packed its bags—bed still warm and cigarette still burning in the cheap ashtray on the nightstand—that he thought this might be too much. A moment in which his Malfoy decorum had not deserted him entirely and he realized the taboo of having a wacko son might just be the end of his parents. And then that thought, like all the others, became subsumed by the tidal wave of the unimportant and the anecdotal. Because there was too much random crap trying to shove its way into his head and so to get it out, to banish it from ever bearing down on his bursting mind, he started to write these idiotic things away. He soon realized, however, that there wasn’t enough parchment in the world and, besides that, it didn’t frame his words with importance, it wasn’t loud enough, bright enough—it wasn’t right.  
  
And so he wrote it on the walls because he could think of the important things if only he could get all the rest, the coming tide of the inane, out of his head—and the walls were almost like a living edifice because they blared down his words with a permanence that couldn’t be ignored. And he liked that. The proof that he existed, that he had thoughts—however pitiful they were. And that worked for him.  
  
Except when it didn’t.  
  
Except when the nonsense, the reroutes, the backtracks, the complete and utter bollocks refused to leave him. At those times there was nothing to do but retreat to the bathtub—his safe haven behind enemy lines—and wait for everything to go silent as it inevitably must. As, eventually, his brain would stutter and balk and fight until it surrendered into a blank stretch of nothingness.  
  
He didn’t dream. He’d read books of course that said everyone dreamed even if those dreams were never remembered. But he didn’t. He wasn’t sure how he knew, how he was certain that his mind had betrayed him yet again, sold him out to the blankness, cheated him out of this fundamental offering, but he knew.  
  
His world had dwindled to the stretch of a sixteen by twenty-four room and a harshly lit bathroom that served as a bunker against the occasional rogue thought that wouldn’t disappear. Not even when he wrote it over and over until his hands cramped and the beds of his fingernails were sore.   
  
Though that wasn’t to say he was completely alone. His mother and, just as often, his father would brave the trek to his door and hover near the exit as they watched their lunatic son prattle on about how things were better today, as that idea about using a time-turner to change the moment he had chased the lizard into the pond and slipped on the mossy rocks had finally left him alone. He tried to encompass how many decisions were made in that one tiny moment but, of course, they never understood. Though, he couldn’t blame them. Oftentimes he spoke so quickly that the only way to understand would have been to be the one speaking the inanities to begin with.  
  
His mother tried, Merlin help her, but his father would only stare at his bloody fingernails—a result of trying to tear away the already torn away wallpaper—with something akin to a deep sadness. After that, his room was re-wallpapered by the house-elves every third day without a word.  
  
To conserve space, soon his thoughts were not wall-eating sentences filled with overbearing words and too-large letters but miniscule equations that were decipherable only by someone afflicted with the same type of crazy he’d contracted. Much of it was potion shorthand and the rest was the invented frivolity of a diseased mind.  
  
The day his mother had walked into his detached workspace and realized his ramblings had gotten even less coherent she had sat down on the edge of his bed and sobbed while he flitted about the defiant walls and tried to encompass the whole of the war into a six-string equation. His father visited him not long after and watched him for what must have been hours—he had no idea where his wand was to cast a _Tempus_ and he had long since bricked up the windows so the light wouldn’t devour all that he knew as it hit his faithful tomes at midday—so he couldn’t be sure.  
  
He didn’t sit or speak, he stood and watched as his son compressed his world into lines of nonsense that had more meaning to him than anything else ever had. And he was so absorbed in this task, in making the universe knowable, predictable, making it adhere to a strict set of rules, that he didn’t notice his father had moved until a hand was covering his own and his quill was stilled.  
  
An intense sort of panic seemed to sweep into his very soul at that moment because if he couldn’t write then it would just keep coming and it would never stop until he couldn’t think anymore, until he wasn’t Draco Malfoy and he was just a collection of twaddle and gibberish. How could he be who he was if who he was was drowned in a tidal wave of irrelevant drivel? There was no escaping it, all the wrong, wrong, wrong choices that his ineffective mind would try and fail to repair, and what would be left after that but this broken, broken thing that had no use except to recriminate and judge?  
  
His father’s eyes seem to plead, ‘enough,’ as they searched out the boy who had lit up at seeing the Quidditch World Cup, or begged him until he broke to buy the Slytherin team new brooms, or fell asleep in his study after he read him the tale of Beedle the Bard. But that boy was gone, written on the walls like everything else.  
  
And his father seemed to know it because Draco’s eyes screamed louder than the other man’s as they railed against the hysteria and tried to hold the crushing force at bay. The staying hand was gone and Draco’s own swifted across the blank stretch of plaster with fervor in an effort to get in front of the chugging train of an oblivion that was brought on by the absence of nothingness, the everything-ness that constantly tried to push its way into his head.  
  
His parents didn’t intrude on him much after that.  
  
In fact the next visitor in his personal funhouse of lunacy was an overblown hero, coefficient one-point-seven-six in all his equations, who looked out of place in not only his realm of madness but also the robes of an Auror. They seemed too bland for a man who had had seen nothing but adventure for seven years, culminating in the defeat of a madman whose delusions had rivaled even Draco’s wilder fancies. It seemed laughable that he should be the one to respond to the common call to catalogue the existence of one more paroled enemy.  
  
Wild hair and brash confidence burst into his haven, a simpering lackey glued to his side, better known as coefficient twenty-four-point-eight-three. He fell back immediately upon seeing his tireless work splashed upon every inch of visible wall.  
  
“Malfoy?” Inquisitive and yet guarded, as though he was poised for a whiff of bullshit. It almost appeared as if he expected Draco had concocted this elaborate ploy to appear deranged in order to evoke pity or sympathy.  
  
He didn’t answer, just kept writing, because this moment had sparked so many more half-remembered remembrances that needed to be condensed into manageable statements of mathematical import before he could classify it as coefficient one-thousand-twenty-nine-point-three-three.

Potter invaded his space, the redheaded menace lingering near the entrance with a look of stupid awe on his face as he gazed at the all too revealing walls. Again, a hand covered his own and Potter said in a voice that was likely meant to be soft but for all the roughness, “You don’t have to do this.”

Potter pointed around at the ever-changing books of Draco’s history as though he thought he was disconnected with reality—and maybe he was, but not with this one of his own making. “This—holing up here and doing this—it doesn’t fix anything.”

And, of course, Potter didn’t understand it. It wasn’t meant to fix things; it was so he _didn’t_ dwell on the fixing of irreparably shattered things that he did this. Because _this_ made things clearer. Couldn’t he see that? Wasn’t everything compacter, simpler when there were no names assigned to the numbers to give this language of his own emotional depth? It was safer this way, safer to think of, safer to write, safer to know.

But it was nonsensical to any heart that didn’t beat with his own and any mind that didn’t think with his own. What _he_ didn’t understand was where the fear of the everything had gone, the walls weren’t serving as his canvas with Potter standing as a tireless sentry between them, and that’s when he realized his hand was still moving. He was writing on the arm Potter was gripping him with as though this were a perfectly acceptable alternative to his larger than life pages of past.

And he supposed it was, what was better than a living, breathing, moving sign of all his contrived knowledge on the world’s inner workings? The oddest bit was that Potter had noticed his substitute paper and yet had not stopped him.

He blinked at Potter after a moment, turned over his left forearm, and pulled up his sleeve.

Potter sighed, rubbed at his eyes under his glasses, and muttered, “All right, all right.” He pressed his wand to the top of the skull and dragged it along the delineated edge until it met with the ghost of its past self at the beginning not a moment later.

The coarse end scraped across his skin unpleasantly and burned just this side of noticeably, a pink scratch left in its wake, as his own face hovered above the tip like the specter of some spent spell next to a number that identified him as criminal, traitor, and coward.

But that wasn’t his real number, the number that represented his equating power, and Draco found it an insult to the order of the universe that these numbers that didn’t mean anything masqueraded about with importance while those of value had nothing but a neurotic psychopath and four secluded walls to boast of their consequence. It didn’t seem fair.

“You’re clear for another year,” Potter said after a pause in which Draco’s own face hovered between them, a sneering impediment to amiability. Draco moved his hand from Potter’s arm back to his loyal, uninterrupting companions. Potter nodded in defeat after a moment of listening to Draco’s quill scrape against hardened gypsum before he motioned to Weasley and left the room.

The silence was welcome because there were no numbers in it, just the nothingness he craved to escape the everything-ness.

♕

“He’s gone mad.” Lucius swirled his drink and watched the fire’s leaping tongues of flame. He gulped without pureblood elegance, only the desperation and hopelessness of a distraught father. His voice was harsh around the burn. “Lost his mind entirely somewhere up in that room of his.”

Narcissa smoothed her robes over her knees. “He’s not mad, per se. He just—He’s gone a bit… eccentric.”

Lucius brought his drink down defiantly against the arm of his chair. “He’s bloody well cracked, Narcissa!” He drank the dregs of it and muttered as though he wished it weren’t true, “You can’t make him any more sane just by calling him it.”

Severus raised an eyebrow. “And what precipitated this descent into madness?”

“Your guess is as good as ours,” Lucius said with an odd hint of humor that seemed out of place and Severus quickly realized—and pretended not to—that it was masking a glimmer of a deep and unshakeable pain. There were moments when it was easy to forget the Malfoy patriarch was a vulnerable, feeling being. This was not one of them.

His eyes narrowed as they bore into Lucius’ and he quickly turned away from his prying gaze. Severus toyed with notion, rolled it around in his brain, tested it on his tongue. “What is it that you think I can do?” he asked after a beat in which neither Malfoy met his eyes. They were the boy’s family, they had the connection, all he had was the faded worship of a child for his favorite teacher.

“No more than us likely,” Lucius admitted disconsolately.

Narcissa reached over to place an encouraging hand on his forearm. “He’s always been partial to you, Severus. He’s not hopeless. He—He’s lost his way is all.”

Lucius snorted and Narcissa seemed to cut his tongue in two with just the force of her gaze as Lucius quickly snapped his mouth closed and spoke no more.

“I’ll do what I can.”

♕

When coefficient eight-point-seven-four stepped into his room, Draco almost thought he had entered a new realm of barmy and started hallucinating heroes.

The man barely glanced at him before his eyes strayed to his temperamental masterpieces of disturbed genius.

There was an odd sort of intimacy that danced up Draco’s spine as the Potions Master took a step toward the left and ran his fingers over the writing on the wall. His ideas, his theories, his past, present, and future that Snape unwittingly caressed, and the sense memory of being touched almost seemed to transfer to his prickling skin. A part of him wanted to smack the hand away from this self he had poured into the lines of cement but he couldn’t bring himself to spurn the pleasure in it.

A small frown edged onto Snape’s face as he gazed upon the cluttered edifice, a miniscule showing of twisted brows, and it took Draco a moment to admit—even to himself—that he was _reading_ his paltry attempt at normalcy. And though there had been a varied audience to his voiceless rantings, not a one had ever thought to try to make sense of them. The place of post alone, before you even got to the tiny scratch of his tiny thoughts, was enough to convince even the most liberal mind that these were mutterings best left unknown.

And that was when Draco realized his hand was lying limp against the wall, writing no more, and the open acknowledgement of that was like an _Enervate_ to the chest, a rude awakening to the uninvited everything that would shove into his mind without so much as a ‘how do you do’. And it would be his fault when he became his mistakes, his basest self, because he had stood idly by and let it consume him.

He wrote furiously, diligently, the moments of his worst fear and cowardice draining out of him to be contained on the vindicating walls until the whispering taunts of the outside world had ceased and he was once again safe inside his little bubble of dementia. But all was not silent, and for once more than just the grating of his quill interrupted it.

Snape was muttering to himself under his breath as he studied the walls like a Muggle stereogram, his hands like giant censors as they pored over each carefully constructed moment in time. Draco wanted to clap his own hands over his ears to shut out the noise but there were no numbers in it, which didn’t make sense because there were numbers in everything. Each and every moment, and each and every action, and each and every sound had a number, something to denote its existence. But Snape seemed almost to repel the very notion of being categorized.

Not a hero yet not a sinner, a professor but not a teacher, attractive but not beautiful, whole but broken, aloof but caring, unfeeling yet harboring a deep and abiding love.

He was an orgy of contradiction and perhaps that was why Draco couldn’t assign him a place and suddenly the numbers eight-point-seven-four tasted black on his tongue. And he was glad tomorrow that they would be taken away and replaced with blank stretches of vast possibility. He would devote it to discovering the handsome digit that summed up Snape’s being and wrote himself a small note to that effect:

_2.42 + s ÷ (1.76 × .003 × 78.97 ×1.00 × .485 × .243)_

Displaced air bristled against the hair on the back of his neck and whiskey sour breath brooked against his ear. “What do they mean?”

Draco’s eyes widened and, before he could edit his action, he had turned full stop to stare at Snape in disbelief. First Snape had attempted to decipher his madness on his own and now he was attributing meaning to it? It was almost like encouraging him to live with a sickness that everyone else had tried to cure him of.

The pads of Snape’s fingers pressed against the two-point-four-two that he had just written and Draco trembled at the intensity of it. Because Snape was touching him, the number that added up all he was—took into account all his faults, flaws, and virtues—and reflected back himself.

“Ingredient numbers,” he acknowledged with a coarse note of approval in his voice. He traced his thumb over an odd thirty-two here and a wandering one hundred and seven there. “Aconite. Dittany.” Draco nodded guardedly. “But the rest…”

His lank hair brushed against Draco’s jaw with a strange, ticklish diligence and he turned his face into it, abruptly placed within inches of the ugly scar that bore deep into Snape’s neck. The two burr holes where fangs had drilled into him concave in the spidery white skin. Before Draco could map the journey of the pearled flesh however, it was hidden away by an aggressive tug on the man’s robe collar.

Snape’s gaze was almost accusatory as he reproved him wordlessly though Draco couldn’t wrap his brain around why. Who was he to judge, after all? His mind was breaking off in little pieces and he thought he would much prefer a scar to that.

Snape moved away from his side then and took a chair in a far corner of the room next to his sightless window and watched him with calculating eyes.

♕

“What do you think then?” Narcissa asked him anxiously before he’d even properly sat down.

He raised a skeptical brow. The prideful woman seemed to have forgotten sometime in his absence that he was not a Healer and his word was not the be all or end all to anything. He settled himself in the opulent chair and pursed his lips. “I think he’s quite mad.” Lucius shifted in his chair and his mouth tightened while Narcissa let out a strained gasp and looked upon him with pleading eyes. Severus smirked. “But there is method to his madness.”

Narcissa proceeded cautiously, not wanting to snap this thin line of hope Severus had dangled before her. “Which means what?”

“That he is not lost,” Severus said simply.

“Can he be—fixed?” Narcissa asked, unconsciously leaning forward in her seat. She drew back a bit. “Oh, and ‘fixed’ isn’t the right term, but then again it is. But I know my son is not _wrong_ or broken.” Lucius laughed balefully and Severus noticed with shock that Narcissa looked upsettingly close to tears as she turned to him. “What then, Lucius? He’s not any less our boy just because of—of _this_.”

Lucius’ back straightened, like a cat with its hackles raised. “ _That_ —” he jabbed his finger at the ceiling “—is not my son.” He slumped into his seat and rubbed a tired hand over his creased forehead. “My boy wakes up at midnight to play Gobstones with me after I’ve come home late from the Ministry, my boy drags me to Flourish & Blotts and whiles half a day away sitting in an aisle with books piled around him, my boy plays hide and seek with the house-elves even though he knows he’ll never win.” Lucius’ eyes hardened and he said deliberately, “That—that empty shell up there who has taken it upon himself to be a tireless scribe to his delusions—is not my boy.”

Narcissa’s eyes were wet as she said pitifully, “But he is, Lucius.”

Severus cleared his throat. “He is not without hope.”

Lucius nodded once. “Then bring him back, Severus. You may not owe it to us but you do owe it to him.”

♕

Three days passed in utmost silence but for the unending skritch of Malfoy’s quill and the fractious slide of page on page as Severus read in his thinly lighted corner of the world. He had quickly learned that anything brighter was Not Allowed, though the reasons for that had not been explained to him. But, then, _he_ was the intruder on Malfoy’s separate solitude.

And, if not for Malfoy’s new mania and his befuddling choice of pastime, it would have been much like their time had been when they were thrown together as outlaws and outcasts at Spinner’s End: surprisingly companionable and difficult to part from.

He was nearly shocked stiff when a shadow fell across the tiny, doom-laden words of Hugo’s _Hunchback_ and he looked up to find a thinner, scragglier Draco Malfoy standing in front of him.

“You’re still here,” was all he said and his voice was rough and unsure, as though he expected Severus might deny it or disappear altogether. His long, choppy hair shadowed his eyes and Severus fought the urge to snap at him that his hair was in his face the way his father had always done to him. This was quickly followed by the desire to brush it from his forehead, which had always been his mother’s response to the reprimand.

“I am,” he agreed after a moment of indecisiveness. He explained, “I owe you a debt.”

Malfoy shook his head earnestly. “You don’t.”

Severus licked his lip. “Mr. Malfoy—”

He blinked as Malfoy interrupted him, twisting his hands too hard around the quill that was squeezed between them so that bits of feather stuck out at odd angles and parts glued together. “You would. If I had done it for you, that is.”

“And you didn’t?” Snape clarified, unconvinced and inexplicably pained by the thought. His next words were harsher and accusatory. “Then why go to such lengths to save my life, Mr. Malfoy, if it meant so little to you?”

Malfoy frowned. “I didn’t know how to live in a world without you in it.”

He turned back to his half-covered wall and took up his scribbling equations with the same enthusiasm as before and it was almost as though he’d never spoken at all as he wrote on and on, oblivious to Severus’ trembling hands.

♕

A week or so passed in much the same fashion and, though Severus occasionally tried to initiate further discourse, Draco would speak to him no more and took to scrawling his endless strings of seemingly meaningless and random statistics across the white wallpaper. Severus watched him more often than read now and was justifiably annoyed when he was interrupted from it by a knock at the door.

Draco did not react at all and so it fell to Severus to let whoever was outside into Draco’s madhouse of broken quills and stripped wallpaper. And who would want in was a question in itself. Lucius and Narcissa did not knock.

He rose from his seat and opened the exit to find Harry Potter standing on the other side in the blood red robes of an Auror, an expression of concern on the face that reminded him too much of his arrogant father.

Potter looked just as surprised to find him on the other side of the door and blurted, “Professor,” with mild alarm and deep curiosity. He rubbernecked around him to see Draco sitting on the floor, transcribing his endless equations, and frowned.

Severus somehow kept the growl from his throat and demanded, “Why are you here, Potter?”

Potter shrugged and indicated behind him. Severus reluctantly moved away from the door and Potter stepped inside, his eyes growing in concern as he surveyed Draco. He seemed to notice Severus was still glaring at him and cleared his throat. “Just wanted to check in on Malfoy, sir, see how he was getting on.”

Severus bit back the ‘why would you care’ as Potter moved closer to Draco and said uncertainly, “Okay today, Malfoy?”

And Severus didn’t realize how tense he was until Draco’s silence had stretched beyond the realm of polite pause and the tightness of his shoulders began to ease. It was perhaps in that moment that he began to realize how great a fool he was.

Potter stayed far longer than was appropriate while Severus sat stiff and uncomfortable in his suddenly too rigid chair and watched them with a scowl. When the boy—and he would always be a boy to him, a stupid, self-sacrificing boy—stood to take his leave, Severus rose with him. “He doesn’t need you to be his savior,” he informed him coldly once he’d escorted Potter to the door. “Sad, as I’m sure it would have been quite the shot to your ego to help poor, feckless Draco.”

Potter ignored his taunt and smiled widely, an almost teasing smile that seemed to blare something along the lines of ‘I know something you don’t know’. He shook his head. “No, he doesn’t.” He gave Severus a pointed look and added, “I see he’s already got one.”

Severus narrowed his eyes. “Whatever you’re implying—”

That stupid smile still danced in Potter’s eyes. “I’m not implying anything, I’m saying it’s good.”

“Good?” Severus parroted back, only slightly mocking.

Potter nodded. “Good that he’s got someone concerned about him and protective of him, good that he’s not alone.” And Severus had thought he would leave with that. How very foolish of him. Potter’s eyes lit up. “Good that you’re finally movin’ on from my Mum.”

♕

The silence became at once softer and rougher in Severus’ presence. Softer because it was true silence in which there was nothing but the sound of breathing, quill, turning pages, and no numbers. And rougher because it was a silence that was rife with promise that Draco was too terrified to act upon. They had spoken once before, those few moments emblazoned in his memory where Severus’ eyes had been focused solely on him. Though the sound of Draco’s voice had seemed to disconcert him, and whether that was due to surprise or upset Draco wasn’t sure and he was unwilling to risk the latter.

And so the silence carried on and it became coarser, and thicker, and harder to break and there were no equations in it to distract Draco from his want. And so he tried to frame the desire itself in numbers as he had framed everything else but Severus was still a variable, as no integer could comprise him. He had managed the best he could, written it over and over, but there was no spark of understanding that flitted over Severus’ face, just a sad acceptance that he would continue this barking behavior forever.

This time when Draco stood and walked over to him, Severus had followed every movement. Draco opened his hand, dropped his quill, and placed his ink stained fingers over the pages of Severus’ book. “Draco, what’re you—” he started, his eyes still on the fallen voice to all of Draco’s speeches.

But Draco didn’t wait for the rest. He leaned forward and pressed his mouth over Severus’, a thrill of pleasure slicing through him as the Potions Master’s spidery hands tangled in his robes and pulled him forward. He overbalanced and fell into Severus’ lap, quickly rearranging himself into a comfortable position in which he was straddling the other man.

He tried to explain how desperately he needed this but the words, like the numbers, didn’t seem to be there when he reached for them. There was just a fierce sort of contentment and a kick of ecstasy. He pulled back, trailing his lips over the planes of Severus’ face. “There’s no noise,” he told him on a hitched breath. “No numbers when you’re here.” His teeth hinged on the other man’s jaw. “There’s just you.” He watched Severus’ eyes darken with some deep, almost liquid emotion and told him, “I don’t feel anyone the way I feel you.”

He pressed the line of his cock to Severus’ hip and was both relieved and gratified to find a similar hardness sliding against his own. Severus gave a perfunctory defense to his attentions, trying and—perhaps a bit purposefully—failing to hold him at bay by his arms. “You’re not—You’re not well,” he tried as he shoved back in for a deeper exploration of Draco’s mouth.

He pushed Draco back until they had both fallen to the floor in a painful, yet glorious tangle of limbs and want. “I’m well with you. Just with you,” Draco whispered as he brushed the black hair away from the pale face while Severus grunted and pushed his shirt off his chest. “You make me better,” he gasped as the man’s fingernail bit into his nipple. “You make me feel like myself.” Severus paused to watch him and Draco smiled. “I don’t have to fight off the everything when I’m with you, I just _am_.”

“Draco,” Severus said softly, his mouth warping bitterly before he sealed his thin lips over the younger man’s and cut off whatever he’d been about to regretfully voice.

Severus’ tongue twisted against his as they groaned and ground and wriggled out of their clothing and Draco trailed his fingers over the scar on Severus’ shoulder and dug his nails in. The nerves were severed, he knew, but he wanted Severus to know that it was no different than any other part of him. He hated that the other man was self-conscious of this one gleaming symbol of his contribution to the war effort, of his selfless sacrifice. “I’m sorry I couldn’t heal this, too,” he said as he traced the silky soft flesh.

Severus’ eyes found his and he threaded his fingers through Draco’s. “It makes me think you.”

A surge of emotion swelled in Draco’s breast and he shut his eyes tight against it as he wrapped his legs around Severus’ naked hips. “Fuck me,” he whispered, begged, demanded.

Severus groaned and his fingers were slick when they found Draco’s hole and prodded against it. He was gentle as he slid in a digit, overly so, and Draco hated it. He canted his hips up and wrenched around the finger inside of him. “I’m not broken,” he panted, his eyes gleaming. “But I want to be. Fuck me so hard I break, Severus.”

The other man’s lips parted wantonly before his forehead dropped to Draco’s shoulder and he thrust two fingers into him without ceremony. He fucked him hard and fast, twisting and grinding once he’d found the spot that could make Draco incoherent due to something other than insanity.

Draco keened and cried out on a gasping breath as his cock whined for release, “Enough—you, Severus, I need you.” Severus’ mouth twisted against his and then he was pushing into him while Draco’s thighs pulled him faster, closer, tighter. The burn was indescribable and all that he’d been missing for the entirety of his mild life he realized, as it scorched him from the inside out.

He had never felt anything even approaching this sort of intensity. A sweat-slicked chest pushed against his own as Severus planted a hand above his shoulder and slammed into him hard enough to lift his arse from the floor. “Merlin, yes, don’t stop—” Draco babbled as he held on tight, not wanting to allow even a moment of this brilliance to slip through his grasping fingers.

A rough hand wrapped around his cock and Draco clamped down in response as he pitched into the circle of potion-stained digits. “Please, please, please.” He released it like a prayer as Severus stroked him with sure movements.

Warm lips slid over his cheek, pressed to the corner of his mouth, whispered against his jaw. “Perfect.” And Draco nearly sobbed at the word as he clung to Severus’ shoulders, because if there was one thing he was not then Severus had hit upon it, and yet he could almost believe it when the other man spoke it.

Draco let out a trilling whine and whimpered, “Need you—” while he lamented the fact that there was no way to get Severus deeper inside of him, to consume him the way he had consumed the sound in the silence.

“I know,” Snape said into his hair and Draco heard the unspoken words to just shut up and enjoy and so he did because nothing had ever felt as bone-deep and right as this moment.

♕

Later, when his thighs were spread wide beneath Severus’ hips and the other man’s cock was softening inside of him, Severus pressed his mouth to the wet skin of Draco’s bicep and asked, “Why?”

Draco twirled his finger in a loose lock of Severus’ hair and answered simply, “You make the everything bearable.”

Severus shifted and suddenly Draco was left bereft as the man moved off of him and settled at his side. It didn’t take long for Severus to find sleep but Draco lay awake much longer. He rested his head on Severus’ chest and listened to the beats of his heart.

He was only half-surprised that there weren’t any numbers in it.

♕

Severus cursed vulgarly as he caught his finger in the cupboard. He brought down the wretched, chipped mug and poured a generous helping of day-old tea into it after casting a silent warming charm on it. He sat at the pocked table, one leg shorter than all the others so it wobbled precariously when he leaned upon it. He stared out at the quiet walls as he told himself he did not miss the curious, slanted writing that had peppered every inch of his temporary quarters.

Draco was a boy—barely more than a child—and Severus had been entrusted with his care, not his debauchery. It was a fine thing to want to help him but to want more than—to feel—to fall—He tore his thoughts away and gazed into the depths of his murky tea. Draco’s insanity was clearly catching.

A sharp pop cut through the empty rooms and Severus’ head whipped around to stare into the foyer. It couldn’t be.

He left his imperfect mug on the table and stepped into the next room to find Narcissa Malfoy standing on his hearth.

His mouth thinned as he stared at her. She had known all along, he realized, she had known when she asked him to make that godforsaken vow. She had known when she begged him to save her son. Anything for Draco, even throwing him to a pedophilic savior to stave off his peculiar brand of madness.

He only felt sick that he had fallen for it.

Narcissa drew herself up imperiously but Severus could see the fear that ate away at the cool façade. She took quick, successive steps towards him and bemoaned, “He’s worse—He won’t, he’s barricaded himself in the bathroom.” Severus turned his head away and tightened his jaw. Narcissa’s eyes were accusing and unspeakably sad. “How could you leave him to that?”

“I won’t be a balm for his soul, welcome when required and dispensable when he’s _fixed_ ,” he sneered.

A look of pure confusion flitted across Narcissa Malfoy’s face and Severus began to doubt that she had ever understood at all. He pressed three fingers to his temple. “Narcissa, you don’t—”

“I’m his mother, Severus,” she snapped. “Of course I understand.” Severus looked up in surprise. “Do you think your affair with my son doesn’t pale in comparison to whatever is eating away at his sense?”

Yes, acceptable now, but not for the restored Malfoy heir. Severus sighed but Narcissa kept on before he could get a word of negation in edgewise.

“He loves you and we would be lost without him—as should have been obvious the moment you stepped foot into our home.” Her eyes grew cold and her voice was nearly overbearing in its correctitude. “Our approval should not have mattered to you more than his—and he has made his feelings about you quite clear.”

He stood, defeated, as Narcissa gazed icily at him. Draco’s approval had once been so tied with his parents’ that it was difficult to imagine it could deviate, but it was more than that regardless. He simply wanted better than himself for Draco. He deserved that and much more.

Narcissa tossed a pinch of Floo powder into the sudden flames and offered as a parting shot, “You’re often painted as cruel, Severus, but I had never seen it in you until you left him to this—this madness.” Her lips pursed. “How very selfish and small of you.”

♕

There was no acknowledgement of their former conversation as Narcissa let him into the manor with cold civility. He couldn’t be arsed to bother with her or her critical glare and immediately started up the stairs. Draco’s bedroom was empty but everything—almost everything—had been splattered with numbers. Much of what was written on the walls had been crossed out, scribbled over, and that was when he noticed that underneath the angry lines was the same equation written over and over. And Draco had clearly, and diligently, tried to erase it from existence.

His chair in the corner, the sheets on Draco’s bed, the headboard, the door, the dresser, the brick on the window, all of it had been covered with sloppy, desperate equations. The only place left untouched was a small patch of floor next to the chair’s legs that was just large enough for two bodies.

Severus swallowed past the sudden and unwelcome lump in his throat and made his way to the bathroom door, which was closed but light was seeping out from the cracks.

He placed his hand on the knob and was nearly shocked into inaction when it turned beneath his palm.

With trepidation, he pushed into the room and closed the door behind him to stave off looking for even a few more deluded seconds. For a moment, he thought it was empty as well, but then he spotted Draco sitting in the bathtub with his back pressed to the far side and his head resting on his knees as he wrote on the toes of his feet.

Every inch of him was covered in ink, in numbers, some he had written so deeply that there was smeared blood around them. Severus sunk down against the wall next to the tub and said hoarsely, “You’ve left the wards open for me.”

Draco nodded and his quill stilled as he looked up at him. He shifted on his knees and scooted closer, almost as though he expected he had imagined Severus entirely. He tucked a lock of hair behind his numerically grubby ear. “I didn’t think it would matter, in the end.”

His eyes were bright and Severus couldn’t look at them. He gestured around them and said, “Why here?”

Draco placed his hand on the bath’s porcelain edge and answered indistinctly as he gazed at the tiled walls, “Surface is too slick, no place to write.” It explained the lack of a shower curtain. Draco turned back to him and stated, “You left.”

Severus nodded thickly. “I didn’t want to steal the rest of your life.”

Draco smirked at him and his eyes seemed to glow. “When did you realize I don’t have a life without you?”

Severus let his head fall back against the hard tile. "About two steps outside your door," he rasped.

Draco settled cross-legged on the bottom of the tub and leaned over the side to look at Severus properly. “It took you longer than that to come back,” he acknowledged softly.

“It did,” Severus agreed.

“But you did,” Draco said after a moment of quiet. He dropped his quill and the slant of the bathtub made it roll toward the drain. He licked his lips and clarified, “Come back.”

Severus reached up and twisted his fingers around Draco’s. “I did.”


End file.
